When I got back home after the first day of school, a brick wall came toppling down on me.
As I closed the front door of my house with a downcast look on my face, I dropped my heavy backpack onto the ground with a big thud and staggered into the kitchen of my house, looking down at the floor the entire time.
With her usual smile and positive energy, my 22-year-old sister, Chava, ran up to me excitedly.
“Tell me about your first day of school,” she inquired.
“It was fine,” I told her, not making eye contact.
My sister was somebody I knew I could always go to if I wanted to laugh or smile. But I had never seen my sister as somebody I could talk to if I was feeling distressed. I don’t think I had anybody in my life I could just tell my concerns to.
“You don’t look fine,” Chava said to me.
“I’m just tired. School today really exhausted me,” I replied.
From the moment high school started, I felt like all my peers were more accomplished than me. Despite the sense of failure that came with these feelings, I never did anything to try to make myself more accomplished. But coming into my junior year, I made a commitment with myself. I made a commitment that I would receive perfect grades and test scores this year. I made a commitment that I would be the perfect student this school year so I could finally feel as accomplished as my peers. I made a commitment that I would ultimately feel proud of myself after two years of feeling like a failure.
However, as I sat through each class on the first day of school, my goal of perfection got more and more cracks in it, like the cracks a brick wall gets over time. As I heard each teacher address how challenging their class is and how much homework they give, my goal of achieving perfection seemed harder and harder to attain. And when I got home from school and realized that there was no way I was going to be the perfect student, the brick wall came crashing down all over me. I would feel like a failure and inferior to my peers forever.
Before I could run upstairs and feel the weight of the brick wall over me in solitude, Chava stopped me in my tracks.
“Elijah, tell me what’s going on,” she demanded.
I lifted my head up and looked directly into my sister’s blue eyes. My sister was giving me a genuine expression on her face – a look of concern that nobody had given me before. Everything around us suddenly froze. The trees outside stopped blowing. My heart stopped beating. I stood dead still, looking into my sister’s eyes.
I suddenly opened up and explained everything that was on my mind to my sister, the first time I had ever done anything like this to anybody.
The moment I finished talking, my sister said to me, “Elijah, you are the highest-achieving person I know. You are insanely successful at everything you do, and anyone who looks at you could say the exact same thing. I’m so proud to be your sister because of how amazing you are at everything.”
It was at that moment that the brick wall that had collapsed slowly started to rebuild itself.
But more importantly than the stupid brick wall, I knew I had found the person for me. I knew I had found the person I could go to whenever I felt distressed and needed someone to rant all my worries to. I knew that whenever I needed advice, someone to boost my spirits up, or somebody to just listen to me. I could always go to my sister and she would always be there for me.
